


#jylan

by CheapLemonIceLolly



Category: Hockey RPF
Genre: F/F, Friends to Lovers, Misunderstandings, Rule 63, Women in the NHL, brief appearances by Max Domi and Clayton Keller
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-28
Updated: 2018-11-05
Packaged: 2019-04-28 23:58:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 7,808
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14460624
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CheapLemonIceLolly/pseuds/CheapLemonIceLolly
Summary: “Girlfriends don’t exist just to look after you when you’re injured. The girlfriend’s supposed to get something out of it too.”“Aw,” says Chych, grinning.  “You’re just mean.I’dlook after you if you were injured.”Dylan’s face feels all warm.  She has this urge to sayyeah, but if you were my girlfriend I’d make sure you were getting something out of it.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is a great pairing that needs more love, and I have no explanation for why I wrote them as girls except that girls are great. I’m glad Dylan already coined this ship name because otherwise they’d be Strychrun and that’s just unfortunate. 
> 
> The timeline of this is a mess, so just...ignore that.

There are no other girls on the Roadrunners. Not that Dylan can’t get along just fine on a team full of guys - she did it for most of her junior career, after all - but there’s something nice about being back in Glendale where Chych is. Like, obviously being back in the NHL is living the dream, all on its own, but having another girl around all the time is cool. Especially when the girl is as awesome as Chych.

They’re celebrating her specifically today, because it’s her birthday, and the fucking chef she and Max have to cater to their every need in Max’s gigantic house has made cake and written her name on it in, so even though none of them can sing except Dylan (who is a _great_ singer, thank you very much) they all have to gather in the kitchen and sing her happy birthday.

“Happy birthday asshole,” Max says, stealing her hat so he can ruffle her hair aggressively. Dylan lifts her phone to take a picture, but without missing a beat, Chych lifts Dylan’s hat right off her head and puts it on, smoothing her hair back underneath it.

“How am I supposed to find a man if I’ve got hat hair on snapchat on my own birthday?” she demands, eyes wide. Max hoots with laughter, and when Chych turns her head Dylan takes another snap and saves it before adding it to her story. That was a good one. She adds a dumb caption for good measure.

“You’re never going to find a man if you dress like that,” Max says, and Chych shoves him, laughing hard and loud.

“Hey!” Dylan squawks indignantly. “Harsh.”

Chych grins. She doesn’t seem offended in the slightest, so maybe it’s just an in-joke Dylan doesn’t get. The thought makes her feel weird for a second, one of those jarring little moments of feeling left behind that she gets up here, where everyone’s been together all season and she always feels like the new kid. Then Chych says, “It’s cool, Max is just mad because girls think I’m hotter than he is,” and winks.

Dylan’s not really sure why, but there’s something about Chych’s sly smile from under her own snapback that makes her want to squirm in her seat. She doesn’t, but her face feels hot when she joins in the laughter.

Fisch takes over the cake cutting while Max and Kells heckle him for doing it wrong, probably less because it’s actually possible to cut a cake wrong than because they just like heckling, and Chych grabs another couple of beers out of the fridge and passes one to Dylan.

“You want your hat back?”

“Nah,” Dylan shrugs. “Keep it, looks better on you. I don’t care about hat hair.”

“I don’t know why you’d want to cover it up anyway,” says Chych, propping her elbow on the counter and her chin on her hand. “Your hair is amazing.”

Dylan’s glad the boys are distracted, because she’d never hear the end of it if anyone noticed she’s blushing.

*

It’s a bit of a thing with Chych, Dylan’s hair. She’s better at braiding than Dylan is, even though her own hair is brutally short, because her older sister taught her how to do the perfect flat under-helmet braid when they played together as kids (Dylan has brothers, they have no idea what to do with their _own_ hair, let alone hers). Somehow when _she_ does it before a game it isn’t crooked and it magically stays put instead of coming undone halfway through the second period and needing to be done again. So it’s become part of their pre-game ritual, Chych braiding Dylan’s hair before warm ups.

“Why don’t you ever just do the Szabados thing and wear it out?” Chych says as she’s dividing Dylan’s hair into pieces for the braid. “It’d look awesome.”

“Szabados is a _goalie_ ,” Dylan says, rolling her eyes. “She stays in one spot for the whole game. Do you have any idea how hot that’d get skating? And sweaty? It _would_ look awesome for about one shift and then it’d be disgusting.”

Chych makes a disappointed noise. “Still. I’d love curly hair.”

“You wouldn’t,” Dylan says darkly. “It’s a pain in the ass.”

Of course, she thinks privately, if her hair was straighter or shorter or more manageable Chych wouldn’t have to braid it for her, and that’d be a shame. It’s a nice routine she hasn’t got to enjoy since she was little and all the girls lined up to have their hair done by the one team mom who knew how to braid properly. She hasn’t really played with girls much since then, and Davo has many skills but hair styling is definitely not one of them.

There’s something else about it too, about Chych specifically, that’s not like her friendship with Davo, or Merks, or any of the other teammate besties she’s had over the years. But she’s trying not to analyse that too much. It’s probably nothing. She just missed having girl teammates, that’s all.

It seems like Chych missed having girls around just as much, because she starts looking up different braiding styles on youtube just to try out on Dylan’s hair.

“I just like having something to do with my hands,” she tells a curious Max while Dylan sits between her knees on the living room floor on their night off, trying not to move around too much while she kicks Kells’ ass at chel (okay, he’s winning, just at the moment, but she’s going to make a comeback any minute now). Not keeping still ends in hair pulling and wonky braids, she’s learned that from experience. “Anyway, it’s probably good for your, like, dexterity and shit. Hand-eye coordination.”

“Plus it stops Stromer looking like she just fell out of a tree, so win-win,” Kells says from the couch, which earns him a punch in the shin.

“Hold still,” Chych says, smacking Dylan on the shoulder. “Or you _will_ look like you fell out of a tree, this one’s complicated.” 

Despite the scolding, Dylan can hear the smile in her voice even though she can’t see it, and it makes her own face break into a grin, bright and uncontrollable. Then Kells scores on her again and she swears.

Later, Dylan’s sitting on the end of her bed in the stretched out old Otters shirt she sleeps in, unbraiding her hair, when Chych pokes her head around the half open door.

“Hey I just--” she says, then blinks. “Oh, you’re taking it out?”

“Oh, yeah,” Dylan says. “It’s kind of uncomfortable to sleep on like that. All lumpy.” She pauses and then adds, “Sorry.”

“Nah, it’s cool,” Chych says, flashing her an easy smile. “Just means I get to do it again tomorrow.” She leans against the door frame while Dylan keeps unknotting her hair and doesn’t say anything else, just watches. Dylan tries to ignore the fact that her bare legs feel weirdly exposed all of a sudden.

“I dunno,” she says, her toes curling in the carpet. “I’ve been thinking maybe I should just cut it all off. Shave my head or something.” She’d save a lot of time washing and drying it, for one thing, and she wouldn’t have to worry about keeping it out of the way for games. And she wouldn’t have to worry about the way her neck tingles and her stomach flip flops when Chych has her hands in her hair.

Chych makes this comically disgusted face at her. “What? No way, don’t you dare. Your hair’s too pretty to cut off, what a waste.”

Dylan thinks she should be offended but she feels kind of flustered instead. She pulls her hair over one shoulder and combs her fingers through the ends, getting the last of the tangles out. “Short hair’s still pretty. I mean, _yours_ is pretty.”

Chych cocks her head and reaches up to ruffle one hand over the back of it, smiling, “I wasn’t really going for _pretty_. But thanks.”

“Cute, then,” Dylan says, and her face feels warm. “Hot, I don’t know. It’s looks like it feels good.” Oh god, what is she even saying, she’s babbling like an idiot. Chych laughs.

“It does,” she agrees, and comes over and sits down on the bed. “Here.” She takes Dylan’s hand and draws it up to the back of her head where her hair’s clipped extra short.

“That feels so cool,” Dylan says, running her hand back against the grain of Chych’s hair. It feels like velvet under her fingers, and Chych shivers a little, makes this little breathy noise that sounds like it could be another laugh. It makes Dylan want to do it again, so she does. “Sorry,” she says. Her voice comes out funny, kind of soft. “Am I tickling you?”

Chych smiles. “Only a bit.”

They’re sitting very close, Chych’s denim clad knee pressed against her bare one. Dylan kind of just wants to keep playing with her hair, half because it feels good and half for the way she’s subtly melting into her touch like a contented cat, which also feels good, but that’d be kind of weird, right? She makes herself pull her hand away.

Chych flops onto her back on the bed and looks up at her thoughtfully, one arm folded behind her head. The edge of her shirt rides up a bit, a slice of skin showing in the middle of her all black outfit, but Dylan definitely only notices because of the contrast, not because she’s looking or anything.

“I didn’t mean to like, tell you what to do,” Chych says. “You should totally cut all your hair off if you want to. It’s your hair. Actually I could do it here at home for you if you want, I’ve got clippers.”

Something about the way she says _home_ so matter-of-factly makes Dylan’s heart skip a beat. She doesn’t think of Glendale as _home_ yet; she’s still living out of a suitcase in Max’s guest room and even though she’s doing far better this time round than any other time she’s been called up there’s still no guarantee she’ll get to stay with the Yotes next season. Like, she tries not to think about it too hard, because if she gets in her own head too much she knows she’s just going to choke, but it’s true.

But Chych just says “here at home” like it’s no big deal, like of _course_ this is Dylan’s home too, and she probably doesn’t even mean it like that, it’s just home like…this is where they both live right now. But yeah. It feels...like someone hugging her and saying _welcome home_ , like she’s where she’s meant to be, where she belongs. Like Chych wants her around for good. It’s nice.

Also nice: Chych likes her long hair. Chych thinks her hair is pretty. Chych wants her to keep it, but she’s a good friend so she’d help her cut it all off anyway.

“Nah,” Dylan grins, and reaches over to ruffle the top of Chych’s head. “It’s probably more fun playing with yours anyway.”

*

It’s not that Dylan doesn’t care at all about how she looks, it’s just that dressing up seems like so much work, and there are better things to spend time on. She’s not really, like, a girly girl. She’s got nothing against anyone else being girly, but heels make her feel too tall to be allowed, makeup is all _weird_ and _sticky_ , and the one time they made her wear a dress during that godforsaken draft prospects tour Connor looked like he didn’t even recognise her and Marns laughed so hard she thought he was going to puke.

So all of that’s turned her off the supposed joys of shopping, kind of. But Chych isn’t girly either, and she loves shopping, so somehow Dylan finds herself lurking between racks of two hundred dollar tshirts feeling kind of scruffy and awkward while Chych takes the whole thing way too seriously.

“Look good, feel good, play good, Stromer,” she intones, holding up a white v-neck that, seriously, looks exactly like the shirts you can buy in a six pack at Target.

“What,” Dylan says, looking down at herself. “You don’t think I look good?”

“Let’s just say you’re lucky you’re cute,” Chych tells her. “I should take you to my tailor in the offseason. Get you some decent suits for games that didn’t come straight off the menswear rack.”

“Everyone else wears stuff straight off the menswear rack,” Dylan mutters. She doesn’t see why she should have to put in any extra effort just because she’s a girl. And women’s suits are all so _short_.

“I mean, yeah,” says Chych, rolling her eyes. “But have you seen them? My suit guy is a genius. He’ll make you look like a million bucks.”

“Look good, feel good, play good,” Dylan says wryly. “Should’ve got me in to see him in September, eh?”

Actually, she’s seen the legendary suit guy’s work and it is pretty amazing. Dylan once spent like twenty minutes just staring at photos of Chych in different suits on twitter because they just...looked really good, so maybe she’s more into fashion than she realised. She looks around nervously when she has that thought, just in case thinking about clothes in a slightly favourable way might make fashion people appear and strongarm her into trying things on.

“Will you relax?” Chych says. “You look like you think someone’s about to attack you.”

“Sorry,” Dylan tries leaning against the wall and nearly knocks over a mannequin in a leather jacket. The mannequin glares at her reproachfully. “I didn’t do a whole lot of, like, leisure shopping when my best friends were dudes,” she admits. Although possibly that was more about who they were as people than the fact they were dudes. “I feel like we should be getting manicures and talking about boys.”

“Actually manicures are awesome,” Chych muses. “You don’t have to get, like, colours or long fake nails or whatever. It’s just like a really fancy hand massage.”

“Of course you get manicures,” Dylan sighs. “Okay, now you tell me about all the _dreamy_ guys who want to ask you out.”

Chych snorts. “Uh, yeah, okay,” she says, and Dylan’s pretty sure it’s sarcastic but she doesn’t really know what the joke is. Does Chych think she’s not, what, hot enough to get that kind of attention? Because if that’s it she’s fucking crazy. Sure, she’s kind of a tomboy, but she’s gorgeous, Dylan can barely stop looking at her.

Not in a creepy serial killer way or anything. She’s just...appreciative. A good friend can acknowledge when her friends are hot.

“You’re the social butterfly, anyway,” Chych says, and she disappears behind a rack of shirts before Dylan can interpret her expression. “What about you? And guys, I mean.”

“Me?” Dylan shrugs. “Nah. Not really on my radar right now.”

“Do you…” there’s a slightly too long pause “...not like guys?”

Dylan stuffs her hands in her pockets, feeling awkward and not quite knowing why. “I like guys fine,” she says, “I just spend all my time with hockey players and I’m not going to date a hockey player long term.”

“Because it’s unprofessional?”

“No, they’re just gross.” 

Like, she loves them. But it’s amazing the kind of shit some guys have said about other girls in front of her, even the not-usually-dickish ones, like they just forget they’re talking to a woman as soon as she puts on the same uniform as them. When she was younger she used to laugh along with it because she didn’t really think of herself as “like other girls” either, but that got old real fast.

“Oh,” Chych says, nodding. “Yeah, for sure. That makes sense.” She pauses for too long again and then says. “Not even M—”

“If you say McDavid I will throw this shoe at you,” Dylan says warningly, picking up a high heeled boot from the display next to her. Connor may be one of her favourite people in the world, but she’s been fielding _that_ question since she was sixteen and she’s seriously over it.

“Easy,” Chych laughs. “I was going to say Merks, anyway.” She ducks as Dylan mimes throwing the shoe. 

“Merks! He’s like a foot shorter than me!”

“Well _I_ don’t know what you’re into,” Chych rolls her eyes. “Mike kept making all those comments about getting him a girlfriend on insta, I thought they might’ve been hints.”

“ _Mike_ ,” Dylan huffs, “needs to learn that girlfriends don’t exist just to look after you when you’re injured. The girlfriend’s supposed to get something out of it too.”

“Aw,” says Chych, grinning. “You’re just mean. _I’d_ look after you if you were injured.”

Dylan’s face feels all warm. She has this urge to say _yeah, but if you were my girlfriend I’d make sure you were getting something out of it._

“Don’t jinx me, jesus,” she says, forcing a laugh, and shoves Chych hard enough that she stumbles into a rack of clothes, giggling.

“Alright, alright,” she holds up both hands. “I promise if anyone gets injured, it’ll be me.”

“That’s not better!”

They’re both laughing, but Dylan actually feels slightly sick at the idea of her getting hurt again. She missed so much of this season already, sending Dylan tired snaps from rehab while Dylan sent back tired snaps from her own endless gym sessions. She wishes she’d been here to give her a real hug once in a while, tell her she was going to be okay in the end, take care of her while she was hurt.

Chych shakes her head, oblivious, and goes back to her shopping, but somehow in that moment something in Dylan’s mind just...shifts. It feels like something clicking into place, like straightening a picture frame that’s been hanging slightly crooked for so long you didn’t even realise it was off centre. It’s like the moment when you’re looking at one of those magic eye pictures and you turn your head to just the right angle, and suddenly the mess of random static turns into a pod of dolphins leaping out of an ocean wave. All Dylan can do is stare.

Somewhere along the way Chych’s weird long bony face turned into, like, a smile that makes her heart beat faster and cheekbones that could cut glass, and soft hair she wants to run her fingers through all the time, and Dylan doesn’t even know what changed or when or _how_ , but everything is completely, irrevocably different. She feels like the floor’s dropped away from under her, sudden and dizzying.

And Chych doesn’t even notice. She picks up a pair of black skinny jeans that look identical to the ones she’s already wearing and frowns at them. “What do you think of these?”

Dylan props her elbow on a shelf to steady herself.

“Cute,” she says. She’s not really talking about the jeans.

*

Okay, so this is a Situation. This is not something she can work out on her own.

Dylan shuts herself in her room and calls Connor when they get home. He’s not going to the playoffs any more than the Yotes are, he’s got time for an identity crisis.

“Hey,” she says without preamble when he answers the phone. “D’you think I’m gay?”

“What?”

She sighs. “Gay,” she repeats, slower. “Like, a lesbian. I mean, you’ve known me for a long time, have you ever looked at me and thought, now there is a girl who is definitely into girls?” She drums her fingers on her knee and when he doesn’t answer within five seconds she says, “Come on Davo, focus, this is important.”

“I don’t know!” Connor says. “How would I know?”

“You know me better than anyone,” she says impatiently. Except Mikey, maybe, and she can’t ask Mikey if she’s gay, she’d never hear the end of it. And if she asks Matty or Ryan they’ll tell mom and then she’ll _really_ never hear the end of it.

“Don’t _you_ know you better than anyone?”

“Obviously not. Do you really think I’d be asking you this if I had any other options?”

“Okay, calm down,” Connor says, which is incredibly annoying but also makes her feel instantly better. _This_ is why she’s asking him; it’s like his monotone voice is her anxiety off switch or something. She takes a deep breath and lets it out slowly through her nose. “I mean, you might like girls, but you like guys too, right?” Connor says reasonably. “There was that whole thing with Marns.”

She’s kind of impressed by how casually he manages to say it. “Oh, you remember that, huh?” she says, very dry. What she remembers most about her, like, ten second fling with Mitch Marner was Connor being insanely jealous about it. Not because _he_ wanted to date her, but because he’s a competitive dick and he felt left out. He sniffs.

“Not really.”

Dylan laughs. “Liar,” she says fondly. “But seriously, I’m having a crisis here.”

“Alright. Is this just a random crisis or is there a reason why you’re suddenly worrying about it now?”

Dylan picks up one of her pillows and hugs it, pulling her knees up to her chest.

“I think I might like a girl,” she says. She feels all giggly, like she should be at a slumber party playing truth or dare or something instead of being a grown ass adult trying to get her life in order. It’s embarrassing, and kind of stressful, but she can’t ignore that it’s sort of...fun at the same time.

“Wow,” Connor says. “What girl do you think you...” he pauses. “Wait. Not Chychrun?”

Dylan rolls her eyes. “What other girls do I know in Arizona?”

“I don’t know, you could know girls. Or you might have a crush on someone’s girlfriend or something.” As if that would be better, jesus. “Wow. Okay. That’s...”

“I know,” Dylan says, and buries her face in the pillow. “It’s the worst.”

“No, come on, it’s not the _worst_.”

“She’s my _teammate_ , Davo,” she says. “And before you say Marns was my teammate, that was for one tournament, it’s totally different. We _live_ together right now. And she probably isn’t even into girls anyway.” Connor makes a weird noise over the phone. “What?” says Dylan.

“Stromer,” Connor says flatly. “Come on.”

“ _What?_ ”

“Are we talking about the same Chych? Not into girls? Have you seen her?”

“You can’t say that,” Dylan splutters. “That’s...that’s so sexist or...or homophobic or… _both_ actually, what--”

“Have you asked her?”

“I can’t just _ask_ her!”

“Why not?” says Connor calmly, as if that is in any way a reasonable question.

“Because...because….because then she’ll figure out I like her!”

“You don’t want the girl you like to know you like her?”

“Not if she doesn’t like _me_ , god. Wow, you suck at this. I should’ve called Mikey.”

She can practically hear the epic eyeroll over the phone. “You’re just saying that because you know I’m right. Just ask her, buddy, seriously. What’s the worst that can happen?”

Dylan doesn’t exactly know the answer to that question, but the lurching, upside-down feeling in her gut tells her it’s something dire. She also knows he’s giving her good advice. She buries her face in the pillow and whines, heavily muffled.

“I hate you.”

“Love you too,” Connor says serenely. “Let me know how it goes.”

*

“Come on, Stepbrothers is the funniest movie of _all time_.”

Dylan groans and thumps her head against the back of the couch.

“I mean, okay,” she says, “but I’ve watched it with you like four times. Can’t we try something new?”

Chych scrolls through the Netflix movie menu for a few seconds, grumbling, and then brightens. “Oh hey, what about I, Tonya? Have you seen that yet? God, Margot Robbie’s a babe, I have the worst crush.”

Dylan sits up a little straighter, with a feeling like a dog pricking up its ears. Maybe this is the moment she gets her question answered without even having to ask it. “You mean like a girl crush?”

“Well, I guess?” Chych wrinkles her nose and laughs. “Like, she’s a girl, I’m a girl. That probably qualifies.”

“No, but…” Dylan swallows. “Like in a _woman crush wednesday_ kind of way, right, not like you’d...date her or whatever.”

“Of course not,” Chych says, “she’s married.”

Dylan feels like her brain is short circuiting. She makes a pained face while she tries to work out how to ask what she’s actually asking without horribly embarrassing herself, but Chych beats her to it.

“Wait,” she says, turning sideways on the couch to look at her. “Are you asking me if I’m gay?”

“No,” Dylan says, feeling her face go red. “Of course not.”

“Of course not,” Chych repeats slowly. “Because that’s a really dumb question or…?”

A dumb question?

Dylan’s heart sinks. Ugh, she _knew_ Connor was full of shit. This is why they give everyone those sensitivity training seminars at rookie camp about sexism and stereotyping and all that. Like, there’s a whole section every year on how it’s shitty to assume girl athletes are all gay just because they play sports or because of what they look like; she remembers that part vividly because Crouser muttered something about how nobody who went to World Juniors was going to assume _Dylan_ was gay, and _then_ they had to have a huge lecture about “slut shaming,” which basically felt like the seminar lady was indirectly calling her a slut? And it was pointless anyway, because Dylan had plenty of material to fire back at Crouser about TK, it’s not like she can’t handle a little chirping. But _anyway_ , it was a whole thing, and the point is now Chych’s going to be offended and weirded out and she’s worked herself up to this for nothing and--

“Dyls,” Chych says flatly. “Have you seen me? Of course I’m gay.”

Dylan blinks at her, her runaway train of thought abruptly derailed. “I...” _What?_ “But...I didn’t want to _assume_. That’s, like, stereotyping.”

“Okay but like,” Chych smiles, small and amused. “I look like this on purpose, you know. So that people will assume stuff.”

“People.”

“I mean, mainly girl people.”

“Okay,” says Dylan. _I’m girl people_ , her brain supplies helpfully.

“I thought you knew,” Chych says, and her mouth twists unhappily. “I thought...um. You’re not going to be weird about it, are you?”

Dylan feels incredibly weird about it, honestly, but not in the way Chych means. It’s more that she’s suddenly replaying a highlight reel of things Chych has said to her - _you’re lucky you’re cute, your hair’s too pretty to cut off_ \- and done around her, like all the hair braiding and touching and sitting too close on the bed, and all of those just seemed like normal girl friend things when she thought they were both straight, but they’ve taken on completely new connotations now that like...maybe neither of them are. Less girl friend things and more...

“No,” she says. It comes out too quickly, almost indignant, like she’s covering up how she really feels. Which, like, she _is_ , but not the way Chych obviously thinks she is, with her smile all tense and sad-eyed. Shit. “ _No_ ,” Dylan says again, more insistently, and then, in a move that feels _excruciatingly_ daring for something so small, she reaches out and grabs Chych’s hand.

“That’s good.” Chych’s shoulders relax a little, and her smile gets a little more genuine looking, but she still looks weirdly sad. And Dylan hates it, so she thinks _fuck this_ and finally throws caution to the winds.

“Hey,” she says. “You know when I said I wouldn’t date a hockey player I didn’t mean you, right? Like, I didn’t know that was an option.”

Chych stares at her. Dylan suddenly has the horrible feeling that she’s completely misread this whole thing, that Chych has never been into her all and their friendship’s about to be ruined by her making a crazy, ridiculous assumption. _I didn’t know that was an option_ , she says, like the only barrier to, what, _being girlfriends_ is who’s gay and who’s straight and not who’s a complete loser. _God._

“Dylan,” Chych says, in the world’s most exasperated voice. “No. Of course I didn’t know that. How could I _possibly_ have known that?”

Dylan scrunches up her face. She’s so confused. “I like you,” she says, because she can’t think what else to say.

“Yeah,” Chych says slowly. “Yeah, no, I got that from the way we’ve been, like, flirting the whole time you’ve been here?” Dylan just blinks at her helplessly, and Chych raises her eyebrows, with this tiny bemused smile on her face. “But...right. You had no idea you were doing that, did you.”

“Doing…” Dylan huffs a laugh and shakes her head. Right. She’s even more of an idiot than she first thought. “Oh. You thought…” She thought they were flirting, mutually, on purpose. She thought they had a _thing_. A flirty, non-straight, girl thing. Dylan didn’t even know she _wanted_ a flirty, non-straight, girl thing and it turns out she had one already.

“Um, yeah, sorry.” Chych doesn’t often look flustered or embarrassed, but she does now, all pink across the tops of her cheeks. It’s kind of adorable.

“No, don’t be,” Dylan says, smiling a little, and then a lot, and then feeling like she wants to put her face in her hands out of sheer giddy happiness. Like, yeah, she definitely wants this. “I’m all caught up now.”

She leans in halfway and then stops because...well, she’s pretty much established she’s utterly useless with this whole girl-on-girl thing, and she wants to make sure she gets it _exactly_ right.

Chych makes this weird little noise like she’s holding in a laugh; Dylan feels the puff of breath against her lips. She doesn’t know if she closes the distance or Chych does, but when they kiss it hardly seems to matter who’s responsible, it just feels like a long time coming.

She’s pretty sure she’s getting it right, now.

*

Having to share a room on the road feels like much less of a burden when you get to share it with your girlfriend. Even if she does pack way too many shoes and leave them spread all over the floor so Dylan trips over them all the time, waking up to the sight of her face smooshed into the other pillow definitely makes it worth it.

“Hey,” Dylan says softly as Chych’s eyes blink open slowly. “I was just thinking. When I go back to Tucson…”

Chych scrunches her face up. “What? Shut up, don’t talk like that. You’re going to be _here_ next season.”

“Not...I mean for the fucking playoff run, you goof,” Dylan laughs, and Chych’s unshakeable faith in her makes something warm and soft bloom in her chest. She thinks she’s going to be here next season too. Well, not _here_ in a random hotel room, but like. Wherever Chych is. She gives her an affectionate facewash to work off some of her excess feelings.

“Oh, right,” Chych says, wrinkling her nose. “How many times d’you think both Calders have gone to the same organisation in the same year, anyway?”

“Don’t get excited, we haven’t even won one of them yet.”

“Yeah, but Kells deserves it,” Chych says confidently. “So do you.”

“You don’t _deserve_ a cup,” Dylan frowns. If people won championships on the basis of how hard they worked or how much they really _really_ wanted it, her 2017 would have gone very differently. “You win it. You earn it.”

“Yeah, that’s what I meant,” Chych shrugs. “You’re gonna.” She folds her arms under her head and Dylan reaches out and trails light fingers across her shoulders, just wanting to touch because she can. Chych closes her eyes and sighs contentedly. “Anyway, what were you going to say?”

“Hm? Oh.” What she was going to say is probably too sappy, too much too soon. But then she’s never known how to hold back when it comes to any kind of relationship, friendly or more than friendly; she always jumps right in feet first. She says it anyway. “When I go back to Tucson I’m gonna miss you.”

“Well yeah,” Chych says, yawning. “Who’s going to make you look presentable over there?”

“Maybe I could teach Crouser to braid,” Dylan muses. “He likes girls bossing him around, right?”

“Sure, if you want TK to kick your ass next time you see her.”

“I could take TK.” She puts her hand on Chych’s forehead and leans back, like she’s holding a much smaller girl at arm’s length. “Better reach.”

Chych giggles. “I’d love to see that,” she says, and Dylan’s joke is played out now so keeping Chych at a distance suddenly feels like a terrible idea. She reels her in for a kiss with one hand curled around the back of her neck, and then scritches her fingers up through Chych’s hair.

“You know,” Chych says, “ _I_ don’t have playoffs. I could always come visit.”

“Oh, yeah?” Dylan tries not to sound too excited and fails miserably; she can tell by the way Chych smiles as she kisses her.

“Sure. For home games. It’s only a couple hours away.”

“I’d like that.”

“Mhm,” Chych says. She tips Dylan onto her back and leans over her, kissing down the side of her neck, both hands sliding purposefully up her sides so her back arches up off the bed. “You bet you would.”

“You going to be my personal cheer squad?” Dylan says, and her breath hitches as Chych trails a lazy string of kisses across her chest, nudges her thighs apart. “Screaming my name in the stands?”

“Well, someone’s going to scream, that’s for sure,” she murmurs.

“We’ve gotta be on the bus in like half an hour,” Dylan reminds her, coming her hair back from her forehead. Chych just looks up at her and smirks.

“Don’t worry. I’ll make it feel like a lifetime.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> What is Chych’s first name in this verse?? I’m glad you asked, because...I have no idea. There’s a reason I have only previously written rule 63 about people who have gender neutral names :P But also, like….Chych is the perfect name, because she’s a chick, get it????
> 
> I am exaggerating Dylan’s just-fell-out-of-a-tree aesthetic for the lols a little bit here, but also you know the only reason he occasionally dresses okay now is because he’s spending more time with Lesbian Fashion Icon Jakob Chychrun. For the record, girl Chych dresses exactly the same as boy Chych. [Exactly.](https://twitter.com/j_chychrun7/status/907805415613890560)
> 
> And yes, Jakob Chychrun [really has claimed](https://youtu.be/pgsVTyjNIzM) that Stepbrothers is the funniest movie of all time. I guess nobody’s perfect. (but that is a delightful interview and informed a lot of the details in this story)


	2. Coda

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> #jylan: Saturday 12 May 2018

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is just a sweet little bonus scene to the original stand alone fic, for anarialm who asked on tumblr. Thank you for giving me an excuse to write more about these girls because I _love them_! Some continuity notes at the end because I care not for facts (but I care enough to notice when I'm screwing them up).

Guys are, as far as Dylan can tell, allowed to cry at two, maybe three things: people they love dying, family milestones like babies being born and _maybe_ getting married, and losing championships.

Dylan’s a girl, so she’s pretty much allowed to cry about anything she wants. People expect it, really. But somehow it feels like the payoff for that is that she’s _not_ supposed to cry about the losing thing. Like, nobody bats an eyelid if a guy tears up a little over losing the Memorial Cup final in his fourth and last ever year of trying, but when _she_ did it it was just another lame girl thing. Too emotional for that sport everyone likes to say is “an emotional game” when the emotions involve punching someone in the head, but not when they’re dumb girly emotions that girls have.

So, when the Roadrunners get eliminated from the playoffs in OT, even though her eyes are burning and she’s so exhausted and disappointed she just wants to lie down on the ice and let the handshake line skate over her, she doesn’t cry.

She doesn’t cry when she tucks her glove under one arm and shakes hands with the long line of Stars, obviously, or as she trudges off the ice and down the tunnel, but she takes out her hair in the locker room and kind of hides behind it a little, just to collect herself for a sec. Somehow she manages to keep herself from saying something dumb like “sorry we couldn’t win it for you” when Merks comes over in his suit to give her a hug.

“I’m all gross,” she protests instead.

“Nah, you’re always gross. It’s fine,” he tells her, all smiles, and lets her lean her sweaty forehead on his shoulder for a long time.

Dylan doesn’t even cry when she turns her phone back on in the bus and there’s a million notifications waiting for her full of sad emojis and encouragement and her many, many friends already trying to cheer her up. She texts her mom back to say she’ll call when they get back to Tucson, sends a couple of dumb gifs to the old sibling group chat, and then calls Chych.

“Aw, babe,” Chych says when she answers the phone, and Dylan doesn’t cry at that either but it makes her eyes sting a _lot_.

“It’s fine,” she sniffs, clutching the phone to her ear extra hard. “I mean, it sucks, but it’s not...they were good. Just not our night I guess.”

Chych doesn’t bother trying to make her feel better. That’s possibly the best thing about dating another hockey player; she understands the highs and lows, gets hype about the right stuff and knows better than to think she can smooth over the shitty stuff. Instead of saying “better luck next time” or “but you played really well though” or something else that’ll feel equally hollow right now, she just says:

“Are you guys going straight home tonight?”

“Twelve hour drive, yeah,” Dylan says, tipping her head back against the seat and closing her eyes. “I’m on the bus now.” She’s already sore and exhausted, hopefully she can sleep most of the way and get home just sore. As a rookie she doesn’t get to claim a bunk, but maybe she can stretch out on the floor later once they’re on the highway and the ride’s a little smoother. Or she’ll just sleep sitting up, she’s tired enough.

“Okay cool. I’ll see you there.”

Dylan sits up again, blinking. “What? You don’t have to do that.”

“It’s only like two hours for me,” Chych says lightly. “Not like I’ve got anything else to do tonight.”

“It’ll be after midnight by the time you get there. And we’re not going to get back until tomorrow. And then I’m just gonna crash for like, a week.”

“I’ve got a key, I can let myself in,” says Chych. “I’ll get the bed warm for you.”

Dylan has this image of getting home some time in the middle of Sunday, trudging into her room and finding Chych all warm and sleepy in her bed, of ditching all her stuff on the floor and peeling off her gross bus-smelling clothes and just crawling into her arms. She sinks back into her seat.

“You don’t have to,” she repeats halfheartedly.

“Sure,” says Chych. Dylan can hear her smiling through the phone. “I’m gonna, though.”

“Okay,” Dylan sighs, closing her eyes. “Text me when you get there, though, or I’m going to worry the whole trip.”

“As if you’ll still be awake when I get there,” Chych says fondly. When Dylan makes a noise of protest she adds, “Don’t worry, I’ll text you.”

Dylan has just enough consciousness left to dig the sleep mask and headphones out of her bag, but she’s asleep before the bus even makes it out of Austin. She wakes up again around two am, dry-eyed and desperate for a drink of water, and finds a message from Chych on her phone from about quarter to one. It’s a slightly blurry low-light photo of half her face and one bare shoulder on a pile of Dylan’s pillows with the caption _c u soon_

Dylan sends back a string of heart-eyes emojis and goes back to sleep with a smile on her face.

*

When Chych sees Dylan’s very old and faded Blue Jays sweatshirt, she laughs.

“We’ve gotta get you some D-backs stuff,” she says, grinning. “You’re not in Kansas anymore, Dorothy.”

“Let me live,” Dylan grumbles, climbing under the covers. “It’s comfy.”

She’d taken just enough time when she first got home to steal a couple of kisses before dragging herself into the shower. Now she’s clean and can’t smell a bus full of hastily-washed hockey players every time she turns her head, and it might be nearly eleven o’clock but she’s not planning on getting out of bed for the rest of the day. She’s not even that sleepy anymore, just...bone weary. It’s been a long 24 hours.

Chych wraps her arms around her and pulls her close so their legs tangle together in the blankets, and plants a kiss on the end of her nose.

“Grumpy,” she teases. Dylan scrunches her face up at her.

There’s not much to say about the game; it happened, they lost, Dylan’s coaches are going to go over it with the team when they go back for their end of season meeting and locker room cleanout and stuff, no point rehashing it now. So the two of them just lie there quietly for a bit not saying anything, enjoying each other’s company. Dylan’s still sad, but it feels less raw now, curled up in a warm bed that smells like Chych and home.

After a little while Chych nudges her and says, “Hey, can I ask you something?”

Dylan makes a sleepy humming noise that passes for a yes..

“You know how Max is going to Montreal?”

“Yeah I heard,” Dylan says, giving Chych’s hand a squeeze. “I’m sorry, I know you guys are close.”

“It’s hockey,” Chych says wryly. “Shit happens. But no, I was just thinking. He’s probably going to sell the house, so I’m going to have to move. And I figure...you’re going to need somewhere more permanent in Glendale next season too, so maybe we could...find some place where we could both live?”

Dylan blinks. “What, like move in together?”

“Uh, yeah,” Chych says. “That’s pretty much what I was getting at.”

Dylan’s stomach suddenly seems full of swirling butterflies. Her face feels hot.

“Wow,” she says. They’ve been dating since April, less than two months. Dylan didn’t even know she liked girls in March. “Um. Isn’t that. That’s kind of fast, isn’t it?”

“Buddy,” Chych laughs. “I am a whole lesbian. I’ve been ready to book the u-haul since the first time you kissed me.”

Dylan opens her mouth and not much comes out except a small flustered noise.

“That was a joke, by the way,” Chych says, in this gently amused kind of voice that somehow makes Dylan feel better and worse at the same time. “I keep forgetting you don’t know all the gay jokes yet.”

Dylan groans. “No, come on, don’t do that whole baby gay thing. You just asked me to move in with you, that’s-- I’m allowed to think that’s a big deal.”

“Yeah, okay, sorry,” Chych says, putting her arm around Dylan’s waist. “No pressure, I promise, it was just a suggestion. I thought...we were kinda roomies when you were in Glendale, we’re still gonna be hotel roomies on the road—”

“ _If_ I make the—”

“We’re still gonna be roomies on the road,” Chych repeats, louder to drown her out, and gives her a little squeeze, “so what’s the difference? But if you don’t want to, that’s cool.”

“I didn’t say I don’t _want_ to,” Dylan protests. She just feels like she’s probably not _supposed_ to want to. Or it’s okay to want to as a vague sort of fantasy, but giving into it this early would be rash and stupid. 

That’s kind of annoying, though, because as much as she loves Chych being her girlfriend it seems unfair that it makes some things about being _friends_ with her feel suddenly off limits, or more serious than they used to be. Day to day, being girlfriends has been just like being friends, only with more kissing (and other kissing-adjacent stuff). Big picture, it seems sometimes like giving their relationship a new name has sent it back to square one, even though it doesn’t _feel_ that much different.

“I mean,” Dylan says slowly, “if we hadn’t...got together we probably _would_ be housemates next season if I make the team. It makes sense.”

“When,” says Chych. A few strands of hair have fallen out of Dylan’s messy top knot and Chych reaches up and idly winds one around her fingers. “And yeah, it does make sense.”

“But we’d have had, like, separate rooms and stuff. And maybe Kells would live with us too? Or...”

Chych shrugs. “We could still have separate rooms.” Dylan looks at her and she raises her eyebrows. “Why not? I mean, it’s not like anybody’s going to come check we’re living together the right way, you know? It can look like whatever we want.”

“Oh,” Dylan says. She’s never thought of it that way. “I kind of just assumed you meant, like, joint bank accounts and combining our wardrobes and all that...committed for life shit.” And she’s not saying no to any of that stuff, just. Maybe not yet.

“You can keep your wardrobe, I’m good,” Chych snorts, flicking the stretched-out neck of Dylan’s sweatshirt. Which is an at-home sadness comfort sweatshirt anyway, so that’s totally unfair. “Anyway, I thought I’d take it slow and save the marriage proposal for like, the third month of dating.”

“That was another lesbian joke, right? Because I’m not sure my mom could cope with me turning gay _and_ moving in with my girlfriend _and_ getting married all in one year.”

Chych’s smile starts small and spreads into this big sunshiny thing that takes over her whole face. Sometimes being looked at by Chych is a lot, nearly overwhelming, like she can see all kinds of wonderful things in Dylan’s face that Dylan didn’t even realise were there. It’d make her want to cover her eyes if not for the fact that she likes looking back so much. She wonders if barely two months, when it’s definitely too early to say she’s committed forever, is too early to say she’s in love.

“No promises,” Chych says, and reels Dylan in for a quick but soft kiss. “So is that...are you saying yes?”

“To marriage?”

“To getting a place after the summer.”

“Together,” Dylan says, sliding her hand up Chych’s arm, over her shoulder and up the back of her neck to the velvet-soft edge of her hairline. “But with separate rooms. Like housemates? At first, anyway.”

“Anything you want,” Chych breathes.

This feels like a pretty huge fucking milestone, maybe even a tears-worthy one, but for the first time today Dylan doesn’t feel like crying. She kisses Chych and it feels like a stamp of approval.

“Okay,” she says, a little giddily. “Let’s do it.”

The sun streaming in through the gap in the curtains is warm and makes Chych’s pale eyelashes look like gold. Her laugh, warm and delighted, is just as golden.

“Let’s do it,” she repeats. “Awesome.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I can’t remember who Dylan’s Tucson housemate was, which is annoying, but oh well. Assume he is still around somewhere but helpfully keeping out of the way. Also I know Merks probably wasn’t at this game and it’s not really reasonable that a rehabbing player who's out for the season would travel with the team in round two (maybe if they'd got to the finals!), but I WANTED HIM TO BE THERE for hugs and important Roadrunners friendship purposes, so there. Finally, this game happened on May 12 which is a full month before the Galchenyuk/Domi trade was announced but too bad, authentic timelines are for suckers :P


End file.
